Google's Hangouts Chat World Will Soon Pull in SMS Messages

Google's attempt to assimilate the communications of the world will soon take a huge step forward, with a company staff member unofficially suggesting that text messages will soon slot themselves into its Hangouts cross-platform chat suite.

The news comes from Google employee Dori Storbeck, who's one of the company's community people in charge of talking to the likes of us like she enjoys it. In a comment on her Google+ page asking about SMS inclusion within Hangouts, Storbeck said: "SMS integration is coming soon -- it is one of our most requested features!"

However, she obviously got in a bit of trouble for saying this, as she subsequently added to the post: "Oops! We actually have nothing to announce at this time. My apologies."

Oops indeed. Given that SMS chat is the big thing missing from Hangouts and its inclusion could see it smash the other cross-platform chat tools out of existence, its arrival is crucial in encouraging the population to turn to Google when we need to inform someone we're going to be a bit later than anticipated. [Droid-Life]